by Lyn Stone
He had to check it out.
The silent beeper he wore on his wrist vibrated. Ford reached into his pocket for his cell phone and punched Blevins’s number. “Devereaux here.”
“What’s the deal?” Blevins asked. “Is she still with you?”
“Nope,” Ford admitted. “I took her to the boyfriend’s place and she left there on foot. Might be headed back to her house. I’m on my way there now. Did you get Perry?”
“Not yet,” Blevins said, hesitating a beat. “Maybe you’d better find her and stick a little closer to her for a while.”
“Now why didn’t I think of that?” Ford said dryly.
The phone went dead.
He drove along the route he figured Mary might have taken, searching both sides of the street, praying for a glimpse of her. It took him a while to reach her house, which appeared totally dark. No sign of Mary. Nothing. She had vanished.
The stone fence in back of the house loomed high, too high to scale without a ladder. She had waited for a long time, concealed behind a high ligustrum hedge, until she felt certain no one had followed her from the street where she had exited the cab.
Mary eyed the huge trash can sitting in the alley beside her back gate. If she climbed up on it, she might be able to get a leg over the wall. And then she just might break that leg or both of them when she dropped to the ground on the other side.
With a sigh, she quietly rolled the big rubber container to a likely spot. It wasn’t as though she had much choice here, she reminded herself. Maybe the thick grass would break her fall.
Once she stood on top of the thing, she realized it wasn’t as high as all that. Only when she straddled the wall and looked down did she hesitate again. “No point dreading it,” she mumbled to herself and jumped. For a moment, she lay there trying to reclaim her breath. Except for the promise of a bruise on one hip, nothing seemed damaged.
She located the fake stone containing her extra key just to the left of the flower bed. Her stealthy entrance through the mudroom would have done a cat burglar proud, she thought with a grin. She could just imagine the encouraging smile Ford Devereaux would have given her if he had been here.
All of her important papers were in the desk drawer in the study, so that was her first stop.
Her heart thudded frantically when she noticed that her desk pad and several items on the surface had been disturbed. The drawer was unlocked. Someone had searched the place. She looked around carefully, shivering at the thought of a stranger pawing through her things. The streetlight shone through the window, illuminating the room enough that she could see there was no mess.
Whoever did it had been fairly neat, so it probably wasn’t an ordinary robber. Mary supposed the police or the FBI had been here after she had left for school that morning. Looking for those dratted diamonds, no doubt. She rolled her eyes in disgust.
Her extra credit cards and passport were still inside the small manila envelope right on top. Mary took the whole packet and stuck it in her pants pocket.
Then she felt her way up the stairs and along the darkness of the hall toward her bedroom. The light coming through the windows would be enough to pack by. She couldn’t wait to leave. The thought of someone ransacking her personal belongings made her furious. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing they couldn’t have found what they were looking for.
She entered her room and gasped. Even the near darkness could not hide the damage done to her collection of dolls. “Oh, no,” she moaned to herself, stricken. A few lay on the floor, decapitated, others sprawled about on the bed and dresser, gutted or broken. Out of the two dozen, Mary couldn’t see one that remained whole. For a long moment, she mourned her childhood babies and the recent little friends she had bought because they appealed to her.
Mary soon realized that the condition of her toys should be the least of her worries now. Whoever had done this might come back. Or they might still be here.
Her skin prickled when she reached for the closet door. The shock scenes from every horror movie she had ever watched ran through her mind. With a determined jerk, she threw open the door and jumped back. Nothing flew out at her. Nobody lunged with a knife or chain saw. She let her breath out in a rush.
Mary entered between the rows of hanging clothes and felt around, quickly selecting what she thought she might need for the next few days. With several pairs of slacks, and a couple of shirts and sweaters over one arm, she returned to the bed and deposited them there. She scooped up the dismembered dolls and laid them on a pillow, out of her way.
When she turned to go back to her closet for her canyon bag, a huge silhouette loomed between her and the window. She ran. It tackled her before she made it to the door.
Breathless and scared out of her mind, she fought for all she was worth, going for the eyes or where she thought the eyes might be. Strong hands pinned her wrists to the floor.
“Mary, it’s me!”
Ford. She went limp beneath him, struggling to swallow the heart lodged in her throat.
“Are you crazy coming back here?” he asked in a fierce growl.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. I checked the alley and found your step stool by the fence. Oh, and I talked to the saintly fiancé right after you left. Real slick, that guy.” Ford’s voice held such blatant disgust, Mary knew he had figured out exactly what had happened.
“So you met Jim,” she whispered.
He moved off her, sitting up and massaging her wrists where he had gripped them. “Oh yeah. I ripped his pretty face off and sold the bimbo to the nearest whorehouse. That okay with you?”
“Fine with me,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “Just keep what you got for her. It can’t be much.”
“Two bits and I feel overpaid.”
Mary laughed, amazed that she could find any humor at all in the situation. Ford could be a tonic at times. She went to the closet and dragged out her smallest suitcase, a carry-on with a shoulder strap.
“We really need to get out of here,” he said seriously.
“I know. Just let me pack these things.”
“What’s this?” he asked, picking up the headless body of the smallest Effanbee from her pillow.
Mary sniffed, determined not to cry. How silly, with her life in danger, to cry over a doll. “That one was Ruthie, my favorite. My first.”
Ford lifted another, leaning toward the window so that he could see them better. “Damn. I’m sorry, Mary,” he said, replacing the small figures on the pillow as though they were real babies.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Where are you going? I’ll drive you,” Ford offered.
She couldn’t very well tell him she planned to skip not only town, but the entire country. He would definitely think she was guilty then. He would stop her, too.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ve got my credit cards. Just take me to a motel.”
He made a wordless sound that definitely didn’t indicate agreement. Mary figured he would fight her on this idea, but she would hold firm. His boss had told him to let her go, and he would have to do that.
He might as well drive her since he’d follow anyway. She knew that. She also knew how to evade him once he thought he had her settled for the night.
Mary looked around the room one last time. Ford’s fellow agents had done this. He had told them about the dolls Antonio had given her and they had come here tonight, searching for the damned diamonds. Her fury outstripped her fear, now that she realized.
She could take care of herself from here on out. Perry couldn’t know where she was at the moment and she would be perfectly safe once she got a flight out of here.
While she folded her clothes into the carry-on, Ford wandered around the room, picking up things and examining them in the semidarkness.
“Your people have already done that,” she informed him. “They searched the study and this room, for certain. I assume they went through the ot
hers, as well.” Mary zipped the case and hefted the strap over her shoulder. “Thankfully, they were neat about it,” she said, pausing. “Except for my dolls.”
The faint light through the window illuminated his frown, but he didn’t reply. After giving the room another careful once-over, he reached for her bag. “Let’s go.”
He pulled her across the hall to the bedroom at the front of the house. Separating the blinds ever so slightly, he peeked out. “There’s a car down there that doesn’t belong. Come on.”
“Perry?” she asked, almost too breathless to speak.
“Safe bet,” he said evenly.
“Could it be FBI?”
“Not hardly. I’m the one who’s supposed to be watching you, remember?”
They quickly made it downstairs and out the way Mary had entered. When they reached the stone wall, he hefted her bag and pitched it over, then lifted her high enough to climb up. She watched in amazement as he backed away and executed a sort of bouncing leap, landing neatly on top of the wall, straddling it.
“Gymnastics?” she asked, amazed at his agility.
He laughed softly. “Got too big and tall for it at fifteen, but it still comes in handy sometimes. Impressed?”
“Show-off,” she groaned. “I hope you have a good dismount.” She peered below at the paved alleyway.
He dropped immediately, landing as if on springs, and reached up for her. “Just fall. I’ll catch you.”
She threw her leg over and fell. The moment her feet touched the ground, he grabbed her bag and propelled her toward the end of the alley at a ground-eating run.
In moments they were headed north, back toward the city, out of the exclusive Brentwood district. Mary finally caught her breath. Her eagerness to part company with him and go it alone had died a swift death once he’d discovered that car in front of her house. “Where to now?”
“We’ll pull in here for a few minutes and see if he’s tailing us.” Ford wheeled into a small shopping center and parked between two other large vehicles. He kept an eye on the four-lane access road while he punched in a number on his cellular phone.
“Devereaux here, about nine twenty-five. Ms. Shaw’s with me. We left our perp parked in front of her house, but he may be moving now. Check you later.” He thumbed another button and pushed the antenna down against his thigh.
“Your supervisor?” Mary guessed.
“Yeah.”
The phone chirped and he answered. “What?” His brows drew together as he listened for several seconds. “Parked on 31 South right now, north of Brentwood.... No, not to my place, but I’ll come up with something. A motel, maybe... Yeah, all right!”
He broke the connection again and tossed the phone on the dash. “Blevins says I’m supposed to stash you somewhere tonight and call back to let him know you’re okay. I guess we’d better go and find us a foxhole.”
“My grandmother’s house is near Franklin. We could go there,” she suggested. Maybe, in familiar surroundings, she wouldn’t feel so inclined to cling to him like a terrified cat.
“I go there sometimes when I want to get away from things. This surely qualifies as one of those times.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier? I could have taken you there instead of—”
“Don’t start in on me! You didn’t actually give me any choice about the matter when we went to your place, did you? And I thought going to Jim’s would be preferable to being alone out in the country! Everybody’s allowed one mistake. That was mine, all right?”
He shot her a look that said he understood. “Okay. Sure you’re okay with it now? To go there, I mean? With me,” he clarified.
“I guess so,” she responded without much enthusiasm as she watched him reach for the phone and punch Redial.
“We’re headed for Franklin,” he snapped into the phone. “Call you later.”
Mary raised a brow. “That had to be the shortest conversation in history. He must really love your attitude.”
“Hates my guts,” Ford admitted cheerfully as the phone chirped insistently. He ignored it and it finally stopped. “That makes him crazy.”
“Isn’t that risky?” she asked, grinning simply because he was.
He nodded as he drove, still watching the road behind them. “Yeah, well, some days unemployment sounds pretty good.”
“I’m not crazy about him, either, since he’s the one who ordered my house searched. He should have asked, and done it while I was there. It was a waste of his time, at any rate. I don’t even have any rhinestones, much less diamonds. I prefer pearls.”
Ford glanced again into the rearview mirror., then back at the highway, frowning in concentration, terrifying her with that look of worry he wore.
“I just wish this were over,” she said, half to herself. Mary pinched the bridge of her nose in a fruitless attempt to quell the burgeoning ache behind her eyes.
“Hey, you okay?” He spared her a quick glance.
Well, if she didn’t count the headache, a possible hip fracture from her jump off the wall and the hysteria she had battled since early afternoon, she probably was.
“I’m fine,” she said with a firmness she didn’t feel. “Just fine.”
“You are one tough cookie, you know that? Went over that wall like a soldier, and all by yourself the first time. Now, that took guts, hon.” He reached over and squeezed her knee, his thumb making little circles that sent shocks right up her leg. “You’ll survive all this. Trust me.”
“Don’t call me hon!” Mary ordered, batting his hand off her leg, not daring to respond to the praise. Or his touch. Her awareness of him as a man irritated her, and he was only making things worse by being nice. She wasn’t tough at all. She had guts, all right. They were all tied up in knots that would do a sailor proud. Trust him? What else could she do, since he held her life in his hands?
Her trust must go deeper than she thought. She had just suggested going to a secluded house in the country with him for God only knew how long. A truly dumb move on her part, when they could have stayed at an out-of-the-way motel in separate rooms. Maybe safety hadn’t been the only thing on her mind.
Despite her bruises, aches, fears and anger, Mary could not remember ever feeling as turned-on as she did now, with the two of them strapped into bucket seats, sailing down a deserted highway, watching for a murderer in the rearview mirror.
Unreal as that seemed, her wanting him made a weird sort of sense. Ford wanted her. His eyes said it. All those little touches said it. If she gave him a chance, he would follow through. The way Jim never had. Jim’s rejection of her was behind these feelings for Ford, Mary knew.
Identifying the reason behind her misplaced desire made no difference whatsoever in her state of arousal. But any civilized woman would see it for the anomaly it was and fight it, she told herself. She would concentrate on the other, more imminent danger—the threat of death. That ought to cool her off in a hurry.
Ford seemed to think she was capable of dealing with all this, and she meant to live up to his belief for as long as she could manage. It was that or fall to pieces like an upended puzzle.
“Hang on to what you’ve got, kid,” he growled, and abruptly gunned the van into high gear. “We’ve got compansy.”
She heard a loud clunk and it sounded as if the muffler suddenly quit working altogether. With her luck, the insides of the van would fall out on the ground. She could just imagine coasting to a smoking stop and then getting shot.
Mary bit her lips together to keep from screaming. That wouldn’t help a damned thing. And Ford would think her a wuss. Instead she said, “Lean forward so I can get the gun.”
He laughed and leaned. “Atta girl.”
“Girl? You are the most politically incorrect man I’ve ever met!” she shouted over the roar of the engine. “But if you fix it so that I don’t have to shoot this thing, I’ll forgive you!”
“No promises!” he said. “But I’ll do what I can.”
&nb
sp; Mary clutched the weapon with both hands as they tore down the curving road, the van’s speedometer locked on the right margin. Thank God there was no other traffic right now. In the right-hand mirror, she could see the lights of the car behind them.
Ford sailed across the intersecting Highway 431, barely missing the rear end of a large truck. Mary squeezed her eyes shut on a short, wordless prayer, certain that one of the idiots on this road would kill her.
Then, out of the darkness on her right, blue-light salvation roared into action. A state trooper. “Ford, look!”
“God bless you, Smokey!” Ford shouted at the top of his lungs.
He slowed, laughing, when the car following them caught up and sped around them, racing on toward Franklin. “Choose your target, man,” he said at the pursuing trooper. “I don’t even care which one of us you stop!”
As it happened, Ford was his choice—probably due to the loud muffler and the fact that Ford had been out front in the chase. He braked and finally rolled to a stop on the grassy embankment.
“He’ll have called this in,” Ford explained. “Hopefully, they’ll catch our pal on down the road.”
He brushed a hand over Mary’s arm and took the gun, replacing it in the well beside the emergency brake. “Better not let Smokey see you with that.” Then he drew a folded map from the side pocket of the door and laid it over the pistol.
Ford rolled down the driver’s window as the trooper approached with a flashlight, his other hand on his weapon. He looked awfully young, she thought.
“Step out of the car, sir. Ma’am? You stay right where you are and keep your hands where I can see them.”
As Ford got out, Mary thought of the gun they had just concealed, and how these lawmen risked their lives every time they stopped a car and approached it this way.
“Let me see your license, sir. You want to tell me why you were flying?” the trooper asked politely.
“The other bird was after us. I’d appreciate it if you could—Uh-oh!” Ford pointed up ahead. “Here he comes. He may be armed, kid! Take cover! Get down, Mary!” he shouted at her.